Fragile Rain
by messyfeathers
Summary: Sometimes love comes along softly in the whispers of a quiet moment. Other times it crashes in unceremoniously like a falling chandelier when you're trying to get it on with your boyfriend in a cheap motel room. (Cecilos fluffy oneshot, sorta first-time-ish but tentacle-free and also I suck at sexy scenes, so that's fun)


_Author's Notes: I'm only caught up to A Memory of Europe on the episodes, so this is probably wildly not canon-compatible but I just really wanted to work with the scene in the rain.  
Also sorry/not sorry for my weird mood-ring headcanon about Cecil's eyes, it stemmed from being unable to decide on just one color because Cecil is far too interesting to be tied down to just one eye color.  
as always feedback and critique is appreciated since I'm still trying to get back into the swing of writing :)  
annnnnd I don't own Night Vale, so without further ado, enjoy whatever this is!_

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Carlos fumbled with the lowest button of his shirt before slipping it off, freeing a hand to pull Cecil's face closer, deepening their kiss. They broke apart a moment later, just long enough for him to slip his undershirt over his head, keeping pace with Cecil whose intricate tattoos already swirled with anticipation beneath his exposed skin. The two lay in a tangle of bunched up blankets and hastily discarded clothes on the bed in Carlos's hotel room, quite spontaneously deciding to take their relationship one step beyond afternoon kisses and innocent overnight cuddles. The air was always motionless and sticky in the small room, but this time it was electric with the heat of caught breaths and half-formed words. Cecil broke away after a long kiss and trailed his lips softly along Carlos's neck, eliciting a breathy _"oh"_ from the scientist. As the kisses wandered further down his body, he felt Cecil's hand instinctively find his own, their fingers intertwining automatically. Cecil deftly unbuttoned Carlos's jeans with his free hand, and everything inside of Carlos immediately melted into unintelligible emotions. The only coherent thought in his mind was suddenly Cecil, very real and very close. He wasn't in some absently wandering daydream or watching someone else's movements on a screen the way he sometimes felt he was when going through the daily motions of his own life. The reality of Cecil's warmth and passion and the proximity of his presence crashed into Carlos like a freight train and suddenly he felt oddly afraid. It wasn't the first time they had made out like this, but it was the first time he could ever recall feeling so vulnerable and exposed. Something was different, and he knew deep down it wasn't just the fact that this time the kisses were only meant to be an introduction. As his mind spun dizzily, he could feel his body go slightly limp, the only surety being the hand still clinging desperately to Cecil's, afraid to let reality steal away his resolve. Cecil had been the one who needed a little convincing to not wait any longer in the first place, so at the slightest shift in Carlos's demeanor he pulled back immediately.

"Are you still sure about this?" Cecil asked quietly, brushing the sweat-dampened curls off Carlos's forehead. "We can always wait." Carlos was still breathing heavily, the sudden onrush of emotions shuffling his hesitation with something close to awe. His brain felt like it was piecing the lines in a dot-to-dot in an attempt to connect a reality he had been trying not to think about for some time now. He simply nodded before he could change his mind, and Cecil brushed his thumb across their still-joined hands reassuringly. They kissed again, deep and long, allowing their tongues to explore and taste and feel each other. But something was shifting again, and Carlos felt a sudden, unexplainable urgency. Cecil had to know, he had to tell him. He couldn't figure out _what_ exactly it was that so urgently needed saying, and syllables weren't forming right in his mind, but again Cecil could feel the shift in his body language almost before Carlos could feel it himself. Too soon, Cecil broke away, this time his eyes wavering nearly imperceptibly from liquid amber towards an inquisitive celadon. Without warning, the jumbled words suddenly forced themselves into an unexpected sentence in Carlos's mind.

"Cecil, I-" he panted unintentionally, his tongue catching the last words before they could escape his lips. Cecil's eyes were curious and careful now as they watched him expectantly. For a moment there was a long, heavy silence punctuated only by their rapid breathing and, Carlos was sure, his racing heartbeat. Cecil was patiently waiting for the conclusion, and Carlos knew he had to finish the sentence, but everything was tilting wildly in his mind and he was suddenly unsure how to proceed. A loud crash outside the hotel room door broke the stillness. They both reflexively turned towards the window. After a moment, he could feel Cecil watching him again, but he allowed his eyes to linger on the patterned curtains an extra second, knowing the moment's spell was already irreparably broken, his silence more damaging than whatever words he had almost spoken. He took a breath to give some sort of explanation as he turned back to Cecil, but the man just looked at him with an unreadable expression before giving him one last, quick kiss.

"Go investigate." Cecil said with a wry smile before finally letting go of Carlos's hand and climbing off the bed. Carlos numbly wandered to the window, feeling suddenly lost without Cecil's steadying warmth. He glanced back over his shoulder to see the swirls across Cecil's back disappear beneath his white t-shirt. This hadn't been how he planned for their first time to go at all, and he could feel the guilt settle in heavily around him. He should have just said it, should have just whispered the words repeatedly in whatever order they chose to arrange themselves and as many times as it took until they ran out. Now he didn't know how to reach through the awkward silence and bring back the moment, so instead he slipped back into his own gray t-shirt and watched as tiny crystals outside the window shattered to the ground in the motel courtyard. The still air felt smothering, so he opened the door and stepped outside to get a better look, sitting on the doorstep of his second-story motel room.

"Hey, Cecil, you should come see this." He said over his shoulder, attempting to hide the nervous tremor in his voice behind a false casualty. Cecil sat down wordlessly beside him and looked up at the murky sky past the small awning. Glass was raining from the swirling gray clouds – tiny jewel fragments, shot glasses, every now and again a vase or a dish colliding with the cement to create the loud crash they had heard from inside. Carlos glanced nervously at Cecil, but his eyes were still an unreadable shade of pale gray that mirrored the sky. The air outside the hotel room seemed just as stifling as the air inside. He was afraid to speak, unsure if Cecil was upset or hurt or as confused as he was about what had just happened, but finally he broke the uncomfortable silence.

"I don't think you'll be driving home anytime soon." He said as he nodded towards a puddle of broken light fixtures directly behind Cecil's car. Cecil shook his head with a sigh and pulled out a cigarette from his pocket. He lit it and inhaled deeply, slowly breathing out a long silvery tendril that drifted up towards the crystalline drizzle. There was the same strange urgency somewhere in the muddled mess of Carlos's insides, this time an urgency to see Cecil's usual smile, watch his eyes flicker to lavender, hear Cecil say his name - anything to break the unsettling quiet and restore equilibrium. Acting mostly on strange impulse, he reached over and slipped his hand into Cecil's. Cecil didn't pull away, which Carlos took as a good sign. There was another deep breath, another prolonged, smoky exhale before Cecil looked over at him.

"I'm not upset with you." He said simply. Carlos could feel his face flush. He had hoped his efforts to discern a reaction hadn't been entirely transparent, but then again he could almost never hide things from Cecil. It was almost eerie how perceptive the man was.

"I know." Carlos replied quietly. _Not upset_ was still not the ideal reaction he was hoping for. Cecil drew in another breath, and still strangely transfixed by unreasonable impulse, Carlos leaned over and kissed him, momentarily reveling in the faintly sweet taste of Cecil's lips mixed with smoke before he pulled away and exhaled his own borrowed silvery breath. Cecil watched it drift upwards with a bemused little smile before putting out the cigarette. He placed his other hand on top of their still joined set and sighed quietly, watching the diminishing sparkling rain. They were quiet for a long time, and Carlos wondered if it was possible that the air was actually losing oxygen, or if the pressure in his chest was simply in his imagination. Just as he decided to dare a small peek out from under the awning to see the sky, a giant chandelier barreled down into the courtyard, shattering with a crash into the long-empty swimming pool. His wide eyes met Cecil's and they both began to laugh unexpectedly. The strange tension seemed to dissipate somewhat in the oddity of the moment, relief slowly filling the vacancy. Carlos tentatively leaned his head on Cecil's shoulder, and received a lazy brush of Cecil's lips against his curls in response. For a moment more, he tried to find something to say, but Cecil was the one who always had the way with words, so instead they just sat there in a slightly more comfortable silence, until the hypnotic shatters of precipitation slowed gradually and eventually stopped altogether.

"Are you hungry?" Carlos finally worked up the courage to ask. His voice sounded small and hoarse without the backdrop of raining glass.

"I certainly could be." Cecil replied, standing easily and offering a hand to help Carlos up. "But we'd have to find somewhere within walking distance." He finished buttoning his shirt and raked his fingers through his mussed blond hair. He looked disheveled, but gorgeous nonetheless, even if his lilac eyes still held a tinge of silvery gray around the edges. "Did you have somewhere in mind?"

Carlos nodded. "I'm thinking-" for the second time that day he had begun to speak without thinking his sentence through to completion. "Arby's." he mumbled looking down at his shoes, slightly flustered. Cecil laughed lightly and kissed Carlos on the forehead.

"Arby's it is then."

As they carefully tiptoed out of the motel complex hand-in-hand, they soon realized that the glass storm had been localized to only the west side of Night Vale. Two blocks away at the lab, the ground was completely clear of any shards, so they decided to drive Carlos's pickup the rest of the way. As Cecil wandered inside to get the food, Carlos turned up the old radio in the cab and hoisted himself into the pickup's bed. The world was spinning again, just a little, but he knew it would be worse once Cecil returned. This time he had to just say it, say everything, and say it clearly enough that Cecil could understand. He rehearsed a brief speech, going over the words in his mind. They seemed clear and simple enough, but as Cecil approached, drink carrier and paper bag in hand, the careful constructions of letters in Carlos's mind all melted together into a stew of nonsense.

"They claimed to be out of both beef and gluten-free buns. So I'm not entirely sure what it is they gave us, but I did make sure to steal extra mayonnaise packets just in case." Cecil explained, hopping up to sit next to Carlos on the truck bed. Carlos slid the food back and took both of a surprised Cecil's hands in his, trying with all his willpower to keep them from shaking. He took a careful breath.

"Can we talk?"

"Of course." Cecil turned to face him, which just made Carlos that much more nervous. He glanced up at the sky, streaked with the burnt orange of the fading sunset. Soon enough the lights would appear and the world would fall back into its strange rhythms. The memory of the last time they were here like this steadied his thoughts.

"Cecil, do you remember last time we came here together?" Cecil nodded, his eyes glimmering jade with curiosity as he tried to discern where the conversation was heading. "That day, you were the first person I called when I was injured. Before I talked to anyone or did anything, I called you." He swallowed, but the smile now tugging at the edge of Cecil's lips urged him on. "I've told myself for a long time now that I did that because it was logical. Because I trusted you to warn everybody else, I trusted that you could get in touch with whoever needed to know." Carlos paused for another deep, shaky breath. He could tell he was losing his nerve, so he began to talk faster. "The truth is, Cecil, I called you first because I knew I had come close to dying. And if I had been dying, I realized the last voice I wanted to hear before my existence collapsed in on itself was - was yours." Cecil's smile softened in understanding, but he still said nothing as he waited patiently for Carlos to continue. "What I almost told you today, I'm trying to now, what I've needed to tell you for a while is-" he stumbled, closed his eyes, and took a breath. The syllables were cartwheeling out of order through his mind again until Cecil gave his hands a gentle squeeze of reassurance. "I love you, Cecil." The simple words slipped out automatically and hung in the desert air, suspended on the quiet chirp of predatory birds in the distance and the flickering buzz of the Arby's sign. For a moment the whole world seemed to stand perfectly still. Then Cecil's lips were on his and his arms were around him so suddenly that it nearly threw Carlos off balance. He couldn't help but laugh as Cecil finally pulled back. Relief flooded through his entire body, smothering his nerves and doubts and silly apprehensions. "I love you, I love you, I love you." He whispered, wrapping his arms around Cecil's neck. The words tumbled over each other with ease now, losing themselves in Cecil's hair, his skin, his lips until Carlos was out of breath.

"Oh, Carlos, I love you too. So very much." Cecil gave him another kiss, gentler this time. "But you already knew that." Cecil sighed contentedly, smile outshining the lights that had already begun to glow in the evening sky. Of course Carlos already knew - had already known for a long time - since Cecil had been proclaiming it over the airwaves since before they had even officially met.

"I'm sorry I didn't say it earlier. " Carlos whispered, allowing himself to get momentarily lost in the glittering amethyst of Cecil's eyes. "I wanted to, I almost even did, but I was afraid that maybe-" Cecil kissed him soundly, effectively ending his sentence, which was fine because he didn't really know what he had been afraid of after all.

"No," Cecil replied finally, cupping Carlos's blushing face in his hands. "You said it at exactly the right time. Nothing could be more perfect than right here, and right now." He ran a hand through Carlos's dark curls before giving him one last kiss.

They stayed there for a long time that night even after the food was gone and the lights around town one-by-one began to disappear into darkness. Soon it was only the two of them in the back of Carlos's truck and the mysterious lights fading in and out of focus overhead. Cecil was leaning on Carlos's shoulder as the scientist hummed softly along with the radio.

"Carlos?" he asked finally.

"Hm?"

"Do you ever wonder what they are?" Cecil asked as they watched the lights.

"Not anymore." Carlos replied lazily. Cecil sat upright and stared at Carlos with disbelief. It was the first time he had ever not been insatiably curious about something. Carlos just shook his head. "I don't think it matters, not right now anyway." Cecil seemed content with the answer and lay his head back down, snuggling in closer against the rapidly cooling desert night.

"Do you think we'll ever know?"

"Possibly." Carlos replied, kissing the top of Cecil's head affectionately. They were quiet for a few minutes as they listened to the sounds of cicadas (and something probably much bigger) in the distant, dark desert.

"They're sort of beautiful, aren't they?" Cecil asked finally with a yawn. Carlos smiled and glanced down at Cecil's sleepy expression, glowing with contentment in the soft red light from the Arby's sign.

"They certainly are."


End file.
